Aaron fell silent, but Filament just laughed. "Choron-zon is coming," she said. "So Maren Ellis tells me. He thinks he's going to liberate Teven Coronal — and he's right. But we have no more need of it. While he's busy doing that, the newborn god will have escaped back into the Archipelago, where it can confront the annies on their own ground.
"Listen," she said, "I'm telling you this because I want people to understand what happened here today — how things came about. Your stories are important, that's why you have to survive and tell the world."
Sophia's shoulders slumped. "Then you're not keeping us here when you set off that ... thing?"
"Not you, no," said Filament. "Nor you," she said to Maren Ellis, "because you reek of the tech locks. I won't let you infect the kernel with them, however much you might deserve to be one of us. But you deserve the opportunity to stay," she said to Lucius Xavier, "for your adaptability. And so do you," she said to Livia, "for your courage. You proved your sheer audacity when you flew all the way to the Archipelago to find help for your people. That courage would be valuable if you started using the Book regularly."
"What if I don't want to use it?" asked Livia past a tight throat.
"Who else would you rather serve?" asked Filament. "Because that's your choice now, you know: whether to serve the annies as represented by Lady Ellis and Choronzon — or humanity as represented by the Book."
"Did you know this was what she was planning?" Livia asked Aaron.
"No," he said. "But I'm happy that you're being given the chance." She looked away in scorn and disbelief, but he pressed on: "No, listen, Liv. Our whole life we've lived in a world of softened edges and easy decisions. All except once. One time, when someone had to look at the world through adult eyes and even the grown-ups who survived the crash with us failed the test. Someone had to look at the world as it was, and make the hard decisions that were necessary — not to romanticize, not to retreat into illusions. You did it then. I'm asking you to do it again. See what's really going on here. See what's real."
He held out his hand. "Come with me, Livia. We can be immortal. All these things you're fighting for — the agonies of the past, the honor of Westerhaven, even who's right and who's wrong — these aren't real. They're just abstractions. I need you to do now what you did before: be the adult. See what's real, and make your decision accordingly."
"You're lying," she said evenly. "You've lied to me every day since we escaped the crash. It wasn't me who led everyone out of the zone. It was you. And why? I've been wracking my brains to figure it out. But it's really quite simple, isn't it? The hardest thing is to live with the consequences of your actions. You weren't afraid to be heroic at the time — but you were terrified of having to live up to your own reputation afterward."
He looked horrified. "You know? But, Livy, I only wanted to protect you. Because — "
"You thought you'd made me, and that I was fragile as glass. That if I found out, I might break. The way you broke the day you realized the kinds of roles your strength was going to condemn you to if Westerhaven found out about your heroism."
"I wanted to be author of my own fate," he said. "And yes, I made you what you are. And look what you've done! Listen to me now, Livia. I was right then, I'm right now."
She shook her head. "Only the dead are free of the influence of others," she said. "Everyone I ever met helped make me. I am them, and I am this place and these people, and I can no more step out of that reality than you can escape yourself.
"I reject your offer," she said to Filament.
But Filament was no longer listening. Nobody was.
They were all staring downward, to where the sleepwalkers had fallen over.
They had been knocked off their feet in one scything sweep that reminded Livia of when the votes had collapsed around her in Doran's plaza. The sighing sound of the fall filtered upward like distant thunder, and now Livia spotted dust pluming up at various places around the city. Moments later a distant grumbling sound rolled in. It didn't diminish with the seconds, but grew instead into a deafening roar.
Livia caught Filament's eye. She knew the vote would be able to read her lips as she said, "Time's up."
In every direction, on the outskirts of the city, dark clouds leapt up. As they cascaded outward the ground shook and twisted; buildings were leaning everywhere. With majestic slowness, a ring of anecliptic battleships rose like vast towers around the city. They had punctured the skin of the coronal like the teeth of some unimaginably huge monster; chunks of landscape and whole trees dribbled from their points as they shuddered to a halt high overhead.
Lucius was pointing and shouting something. In the seconds before the vibrations racing along the cables made the platform buck under her, Livia looked up.
Tiny, but perfectly etched against the sky, a single human figure stood in the air above the city. Choronzon had come.
The sculptural shapes of Raven's monsters shook themselves to life all around the park. One by one they leaped into the sky. Livia had little time to watch this as the cable network she was balanced on was swinging and bouncing under her tike it was alive.
"Take us down! Down!" Filament was shouting. Fuckers of light punctuated her words; Livia glanced up in time to see a strand of cable snap in a bright flash. Someone was using lasers to cut Cirrus's lines. Even as she realized this, the meshwork fell two meters and stopped with a sharp shock.
Filament hung on to a tine like an old-time ship captain weathering a storm. "Protect the kernel at all costs!"
Livia lost her grip on the meshwork. She left trails of blood from where it had cut her fingers as she slid down the now steeply-angled surface. Then Qiingi's hand caught her wrist and he hauled her up.
"Must leave," he shouted. Livia shook her head.
"I need to get to Maren — tell her about the locks — "
A battle was erupting in the air above Barrastea. As the cableways of Cirrus lifted their floating towers and houses out of harm's way, Raven's monsters and other things Livia had never seen before hopped or shot into the air. Most vanished in fireballs before they cleared the rooftops. Sharp detonations peppered the air, their thunderous echoes rolling around and around the city. A dark mist was rising from the crowd of sleepwalkers: a shield of angel-stuff meters thick. Through the angle of her scrabbling legs Livia saw a flickering tine of laser light hit that fog just meters below her, and flash into white fire. The sleepwalkers were now rising to their feet again, and none had been touched by the laser shot.
Swarms of dark specks poured out of the towering anecliptic battleships. Explosions spiraled around them like the sparks from a fire as 3340's forces engaged with the liberators. The air was filled with a steady, undifferen-tiatedroar.
In the midst of this chaos the cable meshwork jerked down a few more meters, then settled majestically onto the crowd. None of the sleepwalkers tried to get out of the way; Livia screamed in horror as the eschatus machine landed on a knot of oblivious people, crushing them under its weight
"A bit of an inconvenience," Filament shouted as she stepped over dying people. She ran her hands over the flanks of the machine. "The blast won't be able to physically absorb the people on the edges of the crowd. That's okay; it should still copy them into the kernel." She found what she was looking for: a large hatch swung open in the side of the eschatus machine. "Ah, well, looks like you're coming with me after all," said the vote as she reached up to pull herself into the sphere.